CORN DOLLY DEAD – short story

Corn Dolly Dead is included in black dog books‘ Short and Scary Anthology. All of the stories and poems are under 800 words so you can get short and sharp jabs of scary terror, then keep going back for more. (Edited by Karen Tayleur ISBN 9781742031330)

Corn Dolly Dead is a horror story set in the small, Australian outback town of Solstice. Thirteen-year-old Leah wonders why the townspeople are so crazy about their corn dollies when the fields are full of wheat, not corn.

There were hundreds laid out in neat, golden rows in the display cabinets, hanging by their necks in the shop window, twirling in the air conditioner’s draft.

‘What are they?’ I pointed through the glass.

‘They’re corn dollies,’ Joan Pringle said. ‘We plait the last wheat sheaves of the season – sometimes in that human shape, but sometimes in circles and spirals – and sometimes we bury them in the ground to honour the Corn Goddess.’ ………